The ancient roots of viniculture

From its origins in the Near East, vinification had diffused to Egypt and Lower Mesopotamia by 3500 - 3000 BC and to Crete by 2200 BC.  From Crete it migrated to Rome and its colonies and then up the major rivers to Europe and from there to the New World.

In his book exploring the origin of viniculture (Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origin of Viniculture, Princeton University Press, 2003), Dr. Patrick E. McGovern pointed to a number of ancient origin stories and their inability to stand up to even the most elementary scrutiny.  While these apocryphal tales can be easily brushed aside, the field of archaeology has provided some tantalizing clues as to the origin of wine.

According to Dr. McGovern, the modern day wine grape can probably trace its roots back to a climbing vine called Ampelopsis that lived over 500 million years ago.  Isolation -- spawned by the breakup of the super-continent Pangea, desertification, and other natural barriers -- led to today's plant family Vitaceae.  Vitaceae, according to Gyulai et al. (Morphogenetics of Ancient Vitis -- A Genotype Reconstruction), are woody climbers comprising between 13 and 17 genera (subdivisions), inclusive of Vitis, and 700 species.

According to Patrice This et al. (Historical origins and genetic diversity of wine grapes, Trends in Genetics, 2006), the Vitis genus is comprised of 60 inter-fertile species, of which Vitis vinifera L is the only species used extensively in winemaking.  This species, according to This et al., first appeared approximately 65 million years ago and is the only species in the genus that is indigenous to Eurasia.  Two forms of the species still exist in Eurasia and North Africa today: V. vinifera subspecies vinifera (sativa) and V. vinifera silvestris (sylvestris).  Silvestris is the wild form of the species, according to This et al., while vinifera is its domesticated counterpart.

The wild form of V. vinifera can be found today from Portugal to Turkmenistan and from the Rhine riversides to the northern forests of Tunisia. The characteristics of the modern Eurasian wild grape are as follows: astringent; small fruit with many seeds; high acidity; tough skin; and black or dark red color.  Silvestris is also largely dioecious; that is, the male and female reproductive organs are carried on separate flowers (as opposed to hermaphroditic, where the male and female sex organs reside on the same flower thus simplifying the fertilization process).  Research has shown that primitive forms of silvestris were hermaphroditic (Dr. McGovern) and, up to today, between 2% and 3% of silvestris retain that characteristic (Dr. José Vouillamez, Anatolia -- Cradle of Wine? Wines of Turkey presentation).

The sameness of the wild grape stands in stark contrast to the diversity of subspecies vinifera (as of today, almost 10,000 clonal types exist and 99.9% of the world's wine is made from its grapes). According to Dr. McGovern, this "... diversity is recent and the result of choosing traits that are desirable and propagating them by cuttings or routings."  What was the source of these traits?  The literature is unanimous in finding that silvestris, the wild Eurasian grape, was, at some time in the past, taken into cultivation by our forebears and domesticated.  The capability of selecting and propagating traits was, according to Dr. McGovern, unknown to humans of the Paleolithic age.

Doctor McGovern states that while it cannot be ruled out that Paleolithic man did not have some contact with wine -- the Paleolithic hypothesis -- humans living in that era did not have the technology or lifestyle to be credible actors in the domestication of silvestris and vinification of its juice.  He instead points to the Neolithic era as being the most likely answer to the when question.

Writing in Penn Museum's Expedition (The Beginnings of Winemaking and Vinification in the Ancient Near East and Egypt, 39(1), 1997), McGovern et al., propose the Neolithic as being the first period in our annals when all of the requisite conditions for domestication  of the wild grapevine were present simultaneously; a position supported by Yuval Noah Harari in his book Sapiens. The charts below -- constructed from information gleaned from Sapiens -- shows (i) the Agricultural Revolution beginning about 12,000 BC and (ii) the technology and knowhow which make the case for these early farmers being the first systematic winemakers (It should be noted that Harari places manipulation of grapevines much later in the historical cycle than does the archaeological evidence.).

A number of archaeological findings serve to cement the Neolithic as the period within which the grapevine was domesticated and wine made and also allows us to narrow down the answer to the where question.

Hajji Firuz Teppe, an ancient town located in the northern Zagos Mountains of Iran, was the subject of an archaeological excavation in 1968 at which five 2.5 gallon (9 liter) jars were found embedded in an earthen floor along a wall of a Neolithic mud brick building.  Two of these jars had a yellowish residue on the bottom which, after being subjected to infrared liquid chromatography and wet chemical analysis, proved to be a combination of calcium tartrate and terebinth tree resin.  Tartaric acid in the amounts found can only be associated with grapes and the amount of wine that would be housed in the five containers would be much more than required for a single family's use.  Clay stoppers that perfectly fit the openings at the top of the clay jars were found in close proximity to the jars and was assumed to have been used to prevent the contents from turning to vinegar.  These factors led the archaeologists to tag this site as a wine-production facility -- playfully called "Chateau" Hajji Feruz by Dr. McGovern.  As wines in Greece even today are resinated, the assumption is that resin was added to Neolithic wines either as a preservative or for medicinal purposes.

In 2010, researchers with UCLA and the Armenian Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography unearthed evidence of the world's oldest known winery in the village of  Areni in southwestern Armenia. "Beneath a layer of sheep manure inside a cave, the remains of crushed grapes and vessels for collecting and fermenting grape juice, dating to 6100 years ago, were discovered. This proved that humans produced wine systematically 1000 years earlier than thought" (Smithsonian Magazine).

Winemaking equipment consisted of a 2-foot deep vat buried next to shallow, 3.5-foot-long basin made of hard-packed clay with elevated edges. This suggests foot-treading of grapes with the juice from the trampled grapes drained into the vat where it was left to ferment. The below 14th century winemaking facility that I visited during a trip to Rioja illustrates the concept.

14th-Century "crush-pad" in Rioja

The wines at Areni-1 were stored in jars post-fermentation where the cool, dry conditions of the cave resulted in perfect wine cellaring conditions. Traces of a grape used in red wine production today were found on pot sherds at the excavation site providing a new link between ancient and modern wine production (Smithsonian Magazine).

Winemaking artifacts found at Areni-1 (Source: www.si.edu)

According to Patrice This et al., "Uncertainty remains about the place and period of the original domestication ... but archaeological and historical evidence suggest that premier domestication occurred in the Near East."

McGovern takes the position of the Near East as the locale and the Neolithic as the period.  Doctor Jose Vouillamez sees Transcaucasia as the consensus center of origin for botanists, archaeologists, and historians but avers that recent findings in genetics, archaeology, and linguistics point to southeast Turkey between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers as the point of origin. Sean Myles et al., (Genetic structure and domestication history of the grape, PNAS 2010) only goes as far as claiming a Near East origin for vitis vinifera subspecies vinifera.

©Wine -- Mise en abyme